Louis Lingg writes: "Human Rights Watch has posted a report and anlysis of women's rights in Afghanistan: 'Humanity Denied'.
An excerpt: Throughout Afghanistan's civil war, the major armed factions - primarily the Taliban and the United National Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (commonly
known as the "United Front" or by its previous name, the Northern Alliance), a coalition of mainly Tajik, Uzbek, and ethnic Hazara parties - have repeatedly
committed serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law. Women have borne the brunt of this violence and discrimination. In the civil war, women
have suffered massive, systematic, and unrelenting human rights abuses that have permeated every aspect of their lives. Both Taliban forces and forces now grouped in
the United Front have sexually assaulted, abducted, and forcibly married women during the armed conflict, targeting them on the basis of both gender and ethnicity.
Thousands of women have been physically assaulted and have had severe restrictions placed on their liberty and fundamental freedoms. Moreover, the Taliban have
sought to erase women from public life. They have banned women from employment in most sectors; banned education of girls beyond primary school; forbidden
women from going out in public without the accompaniment of a close male relative (mahram); and banned women from appearing in public without wearing an
all-enveloping chadari (a head-to-toe garment). These restrictions assault women's human dignity and threaten their very right to life."
